Exclusive exhibition of various forms of content (e.g., movies, plays, concerts, and sporting events) commonly occurs in location-based venues where attendant constraints, such as limited seats and showtimes, of access for the public can greatly limit the potential reach for that content. Movies in theatres are a primary example of content with such constraints. For a new movie release, theatres typically have a limited window of exclusivity to exhibit the new movie to as many people as possible while having to balance the showtimes and seat counts among all of the movies exhibited at any given theatre.
Movies are typically released exclusively to theaters for a minimum period of 90 days. However, the bulk of people attend a new movie during the first few weeks of the release window, and the availability of each movie declining precipitously thereafter. Even for blockbuster movies, which might continue to attract high attendance in the later stage of the release window, the general availability to the public is still reduced over time as it plays on fewer screens and with fewer showtimes. During the time between the steep attendance drop and later DVD/Blu-Ray disc release, both the movie studios and theatre operators (exhibitors) are denied potential viewers due to lack of availability during the “dead period” for the film prior to DVD, as theatre operators remove lower performing movies from screens, and replace them with newer and/or better performing movies. When this dead period occurs, potential revenue for movie studios and theatre operators are lost.
Movies generally do not play in theatres for the full 90+ days of the theatrical release window because the economics of holding a screen for an entire run rarely makes sense. In a typical 90-day period, approximately 125-150 movies are released to theatres. Theatres in turn typically have between 4 and 30 screens, each seating anywhere from 30-300 people. Because of the non-continuous nature of adding seats to match the title's appeal (i.e.—a step function from 0 seats to one screen that holds 30 or more people), and the competition among movies for screen real estate, the public is usually unable to find even new movies soon after their theatrical release. Further complicating matters, scheduled showtimes cannot possibly always align with the specific needs of all members of the public, and the varying degrees of ease of access to theatres (e.g., distance, weather, geographical constraints) further combine to limit the overall revenue for any single title even at its peak moment of awareness. All of these complications translate directly to potentially thousands of lost attendances. One way to recoup some of the lost attendance is to provide an alternative way for consumers to watch movies when they cannot be found (or are hard to find) in theatres.